Main Production Ideas.

Title Sequence Ideas.

'The Secret Life Of Tommy Blackwell'.

Set during the swinging sixties, Tommy Blackwell's character, is an eccentric personality, who teaches a year 10 English class at Rodwell High School. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, are what he believes is the life of a fun teacher.

Opening Title Sequence.

The audience will see the character 'Tommy', getting dressed in his room, with the backing of 60s style music. The sequence will consist of the main character getting ready for what seems like a night out on the town, set during the 1960s. The sequence will be made with the background of a comic strip style, where 3 or more shots will be playing at the same time. Each will show different moments of 'Tommy' getting ready. Some shots will be focusing on detailed factors of the character, such as a focus on a cigarette being lit. and the character putting on a fur coat. The scenes will be filmed in the character's home, which will have the mise-en-scene of a stereotypical 1960s bedroom. Showing iconic posters from that era.

Research Of Main Task.

Costume.

Our influence on the clothing was by noting down how in 'The Boat That Rocked' the stereotypical swinging sixties is portrayed through clothing. Here to the left, we see how Richard Curtis has researched into the 60s era and pulled out ecentric characteristics of the dress sense during the sixties. From this and using our own research, we made the decision to use this stereotypical costume design.

Mise-en-scene.

The key idea of creating the swinging sixties was making sure the mise-en-scene was in key with the concept of setting the production during that era. How we made this possible was by using album covers from that time to boost the beliefs of the audience. In our film, we used a panning shot which focused on the mise-en-scene which showed a number of album covers, which included the one on the right. Also, knowing the stereotypical lifestyle of a swinging sixties character, we made sure that we had to create the setting to fit the era. We researched artists and style of household pieces. We mainly used Paisley styled pictures to create the sixties interior, we also used the Paisley style on the character's costume.

Music.

We researched different unsigned tracks which would fit well with our media film, we went through 9 different tracks; Grolling Hone - Rita & The Rock n Rollers, Jazzed - Blue Attitude, Good Ol Days - Kim O Harper, I got A Dime - The Straight 8's, Touch Me 2 - Gareth Johnson, T Bird Roller - Christian Marsac, Stratocaster - Christian Marsac, Stompbox Boogie - Anthony Leonard and Lonely Hearts Club Dance - Jackie Barnett. From these 9 tracks, we both liked the last two tracks, as these tracks both have an upbeat pace and fit well with the era that we were trying to create in the film. However, in the end, we chose to use a copyrighted song, Street Fighting Man - The Rolling Stones, as we thought this was perfect for the film concept and was used whilst filming the opening sequence. However, if this film was going to be a worldwide product, that we would have to follow copyright laws to gain right to use the music for our media sequence.

Clothing And Set.

Clothing.
As our media piece was set in the swinging sixties, we had to make sure that the character was dressed exactly in time of when the film is set. If we didn't make sure of the costume as part of the continuity of the film, the film would be ruined and the realism would be lost. The main character was dressed in black trousers, pointed leather shoes, a red and orange paisley shirt, a beige tweed blazer and a brown leather jacket, and blue scarf. This costume design was influenced by noticing the stereotypical representation of the different styles in our influential film 'The Boat That Rocked'. We based the clothing style on the character of 'Gavin Kavanagh', who was dressed in an eccentric outfit, full of colours which for the audience, is a clear representation of the 'swinging sixties'. However, we made sure that the costume wasn't too over the top for the audience not to be put off by the costume, otherwise if the clothing was too much like a fancy dress costume, the audience wouldn't believe the plot of the story.










Set.
The setting was key to our production, due to the fact, the film was set during the 1960s era. Of course, as we haven't got a massive budget to create a 60s styled street. So we had to make sure that, when we filmed the main character 'Tommy' running to work, that we did not shot modern day vehicles or any other present day. In fact, during the filming we were troubled with modern day actions. We excluded these by making close-ups to the actor and making shots in areas where there isn't much modern day realities. The first setting was set in the main character's bedroom. We see a lot of mise-en-scene based on the sixties and accessories which linked to the character such as scarves, a fur coat and many vinyl covers. The decor of the room was made to look like a sixties room, with paisley pictures and cigarettes everywhere.

Two Minute Task Ideas.

As a group, we have been influenced by the film, 'The Boat That Rocked'. From this film, we noticed how the life of the 60's would be a different theme for a opening title sequence. We also noticed how the comedy involved with the film is witty and subtle. We favoured the music in the film. We enjoy the music from that era and using that style of music would be a different angle for the film. Another film which has influenced us, was 'Four Weddings And A Funeral'. The opening sequence of where Hugh Grant's character is getting ready in a rush and swearing constantly. With this opening sequence, it creates the genre of the film, which is a comedy. Using this way of showing what genre the film is by the opening sequence, we thought of using this technique in our filming production to create the same effect, such as constant swearing, falling over when getting dressed and being late for 'work'.

Preliminary Task Film

Here is the youtube link for our preliminary task film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HlMciVXAI

Evaluation Of Preliminary Task

Evaluating Video Production.

We had to ensure continuity during recording. We made sure that the lighting was the same, the mise-en-scene and the costume of characters. With the language of the film, we also had to use continuity with the way the actors brought out the dialogue - the accent, the subtext behind the words. Otherwise, if we had changed it, the continuity of the piece would have been lost, and the audience would've got confused and lost.

The filming mistakes we had to overcome, was that some shots were blurred. However the shot does come into focus when a character comes into the shot. We as a group all agreed that this effect was a good choice to keep, as it made the piece of film a stylized piece, experimenting with new ideas etc. Along with the blurred effects, we had to sort out the lighting continuity of each shot we took. The way we kept the lighting continuity was looking at the film we recorded before, and noted down how the light was positioned, the amount of light needed and what light effect we used before hand. Another problem we had was, maintaining a steady camera shot as we had to use a hand-held camera, which was a difficulty due to the fact that our shots had to be still, and not to make the filming look amateurish. The reason we didn't use a tripod is because of the type of shots we wanted. For example, we used a shot where the camera was on one character then twisted over the scene in a 180 degree angle to the other character.

Our genre which we aimed for was a 1930's film noir which I believe we achieved. I believe that the audience would be happy with the final edit and product of the film. How we achieved the 1930's noir style, we made sure our mise en scene was to the right period. We used simple props, such as, a ring binder and a box of matches. There was no modern technology involved in the scenes. The costume was in the style of the 1930's gangster/thriller. We made sure there were no bright colours which would've ruined the concept and illusion that this film was set during the 1930's. Along with the mise en scene and costume, the actors had to think about the accents of their characters during this time period. For the police inspector character, the actor was American/slight Italian accent, to represent Mafia characters of that era.

I believe that our filming was to a good standard, for the audience to be enticed to see what the film will be about. Draws the audience in and wanting to understand the background story. With the two lines of dialogue, the audience will not know what the story is. However the dialogue will capture the audience and make them want to understand what is actually happening throughout the film.

Film Noir

Film Noir is usually associated with crime fiction films, which emphasised cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. The classic film noir period was stretched between the 1940s and 1950s. Film noir from this era was associated with the low key black and white visual style. The main stories were based from the depression in America. The name 'Film Noir' - meaning 'black film' in French - was first applied by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, which was unknown to American film makers of that era.

The aesthetics of 'Film Noir' are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, an artistic movement from the 1910s and 20s which involved theatre, photography, painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as cinema. Due to the growing threat of the Nazi power, led to German directors fleeing to Hollywood. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak and Michael Curtiz. With them, they brought the dramatically shadowed lighting style and an expressive approach to visual composition, which now has become well known as mise-en-scene. This led to making some of the well known 'Noir' films. Later on, many films in the 1930s were influenced by German Expressionism. Well known films such as, 'Dracula' (1931) and 'The Mummy' (1932). The closest film which has all the elements of 'Noir', was the film 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941) which was widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era. Most of the 'Noir' labelled films were low (and modestly low budgeted features without major stars) movies either literally or spirited. With this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical-big picture constraints.